Techrights
Did Microsoft 'Write' (by Chatbots) This 'Article' About WINE?
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 07, 2024
SPAM by any other name...
The Web is drowning in garbage because of 'garbage people' who paste garbage onto it. Some even call themselves "journalists" and convince themselves that operating some bots (for state-of-the-art plagiarism) is "journalism". They make what we used to call "spamfarms" about 20 years ago, except they label these "news sites".
Consider what we saw yesterday, "Wine 10.0-rc1 brings major Windows compatibility updates to Linux" (cited without hesitation at first).
Is this really an article or just more LLM slop from the fantastic journalist with poor comprehension of what he's covering?
This is the front page of BetaNews right now (the top item is from the site's chief editor; it's just marketing spam about LLMs):
What about the second from the top?
Real article?
Let's find out.
It looks like he decided to throw some words (prompting) into Microsoft LLMs and then mildly edited the output. That's not journalism, sorry, and moreover it outsources coverage of the competition to "bullshit generators" operated by Microsoft (to cover Microsoft-related topics and Microsoft's competition).
What they're doing here isn't merely a case of "laziness". It is immoral. We'll keep watching and "grading" them. If this makes people reluctant to follow their footsteps, then we've already accomplished a lot. "Bullshit artists" needs to be exposed, not just ignored or skipped. Otherwise they may carry on, furthering the collateral damage (such as filling the Web with Microsoft lies, generated by Microsoft bots). █
Also see: BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles' | It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead | BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles" | BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In | Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam | At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots) | BetaNews is Run and Written by Bots That Make Clickbait | BetaNews, Desperate for Clicks, is Pushing Donald Trump Spam Created by LLMs (Slop)